Sunday, March 1, 2009

Day One of the Cruise to the Caribbean

Lazy, sleepy and kinda tired from packing (yes TIRED…it is ridiculous how tiring it is to put outfits together and then edit, edit, edit…) we got up for the drive from Dallas to Galveston. The ship departed from Galveston at 5pm, so we figured we needed to be up and running to give us some additional time, by 8ish. The 5 hour drive could be done kinda casually, and worst case scenario, we hit traffic somewhere and we have a little coosh time to make it up.

I’m gonna say this with just a skosh of anger…I FREAKIN’ HATE HOUSTON, TX. There, I said it. Our drive was going along really pretty smoothly. Actually, it was going so smoothly, I was falling asleep at the wheel. (Told you I was tired…I got 5 hours of sleep and couldn’t nap while we drove like some people.) Then we got just outside of the sh!thole that is Houston Texas and started to see the red lights. Not traffic signals, but brake lights. Apparently, the brilliant men and women of TxDoT decided to repair a bridge on THE ONLY MAJOR THOROUGHFARE TO HOUSTON on Sunday. Fine, I like the city actually putting our tax dollars to work to repair roads and stuff, because I sure don’t want bridge parts falling down on my car. But here is where Houston became a wasteland of the village idiots…we see construction signs and realize that the leftmost of 5 lanes was being closed. Fine…we move over as the traffic allows, then sit. And sit. And creep. Then sit. We’re thinking…maybe there was an accident. Maybe a car broke down waiting for traffic to open up. We are the state of the brokedown hooptie, so anything is possible. We crest the first hill and see more freakin’ lights. Next hill, 15 minutes later, and another lane seems to be closed.

Now the time is just after 3pm. We are getting increasingly worried and more and more irritated. We crest an additional hill (now 45 minutes into this adventure) and see that instead of just closing a lane or two, they have COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN THE ROAD, diverting traffic to the access road afters l o o o o o o o o o o o o o o w l y teasing us with a lane closure or two! Fuckers. We, of course, want the road crews to be safe and not get randed over, but 45 IS THE ONLY ROUTE AROUND HOUSTON!!!!!! Chantal (or sassy GPS) was not about to have it and when we pulled of onto the access road, we got the silent treatment from our obviously pissed off sista of a GPS like “Ummmmhmmmm…you better be glad I can’t tell you where the hell to go, but you better know I’mma cuss you when I get a chance…”As we passed the workcrew, 6 guys standing around on the bridge while 2 guys actually worked, I wondered if they actually could read the minds of the thousands of people silently hating them for their part in the traffic delays.

Okay, so we finally made it around the clusterf-ck that is Houston and start making time to our ship. We finally make it to Galveston and the ship after breaking a few land speed records to the repeated refrains of the Babyman nervously saying “Don’t get a ticket! Don’t get a ticket!” Late boarding kinda rocked (if it weren’t for the stress of the drive). We walked in, walked up to the desks of every stop involved, with almost no delay. In fact, we even made it just in time to do the ship drill, then head right off to explore the ship.

The Voyager of the Seas is AMAZING!!! It’s a huge gay ship. Major rooms are named after operas Carmen, La Boheme, The Magic Flute…Pictures will be posted, so you can enjoy the many wonders that is the Voyager of the Seas. We waited awhile for the luggage to arrive at our room, so we had to skip the 1st formal dinner. Downside: no gorging on steaks in front of the new people. Upside: we got to watch the Oscars kinda live!!!! We watched it on TNT on the Spanish language version (Ed. note: Wes, if you’re reading this, your show opener is the music for GA.Ma styling products out of Italy and every time we saw the commercial, I smiled a little.)

The show was wonderful, and whether you agree or not with the winners (screw you, but Heath Ledger did deserve the win), I thought the show was the best it’s been in ages and I loved the way the acting nominees were presented (and honored).

Tomorrow is a day at sea, so we plan to explore the ship and read a lot. *yawn*